Relocation Analysis of Stabilizing MAC

The designers of media access control (MAC) protocols often do not consider the relocation of mobile nodes. Alternatively, when they do assume that the nodes are not stationary, designers tend to assume that some nodes temporarily do not change their location and coordinate the communications among mobile nodes. An understanding is needed of the relationship between the performances of MAC algorithms and the different settings by which the location of the mobile nodes is modeled. We study this relationship with an emphasis on stabilization concepts, which are imperative in mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs). We show that efficient MAC algorithms must balance a trade-off between two strategies; one that is oblivious to the history of local broadcasts and one that is not.